Thailand is an excellent country for a bird watching trip with a wide variety and number of impressive species. However, many birders come to Thailand for a more touristic trip with their non-birding partners and most of these will spend at least some time at one of Thailand’s famous beaches. I recently spent a few days taking it easy at a low-key beach area in Pranburi and while I really appreciated taking life easy I also wanted to do a little bit of birding in the mornings and make a virtual bird watching video to show people how many species of birds can be found around a typical beach so long as you do not stay in one of the very heavily built up resorts such as Patong or Pattaya. I have written on this subject before – Birding When Not Birding – but I wanted to expand upon this theme in a video; as they say a picture is worth a thousand words I suggest that a video is worth a thousand pictures.We spent three nights at Pranburi beach, close to Thao Kosa Forest Park at Sanghiran Resort. This low-key accommodation was comfortable and only a short walk to the beach and was very inexpensive. Shortly after arriving I drove around the area to check out where birds could be seen in the morning. I found a variety of coastal scrub habitats, a wooded rocky outcrop, various types of agriculture and a freshwater marsh as well, of course, as the beach itself.

Although beaches that attract tourists are not usually full of birds, the beach at Pranburi is fairly typical of most of the places that Thai tourists go to in that it is not heavily developed so that a lot of species can be found by poking around in a variety of habitats. The beach hosted a few breeding Little Terns which noisliy collected fish from the sea and several inlets had Pacific Reef Egrets hunting in the shallows.

There were also a few Little Egrets and a small group of Lesser Sand Plovers with some Greater Sand Plovers for company. A pair of Malaysian Plovers with a single chick was a bit of a surprise given the lack of breeding habitat at the upper part of the beaches here. Most of the beaches have promenades or rock embankments in the area where naturally there would be vegetation; the area where Malaysian Plovers nest. In this way the authorities have destroyed miles of Malaysian Plover breeding habitat and have resulted in wave deflection which is now washing the beach away at a rapid rate!!!

In the very early morning, as usual, there was a lot of bird activity and while Coppersmith Barbet, Ashy Woodswallow and a variety of Mynas were expected a real surprise was an Oriental Pied Hornbill in a palm tree behind a 7/11 convenience store.

Another very nice bird that I came across in trees around the accommodation and nearby shops was a singing Black-naped Oriole. The subspecies that occurs here in the breeding season has black wings and quite different to the migratory race which is much commoner.

Just standing around eating my takeaway breakfast resulted in quite a few birds including a group of Blue-tailed Bee-eaters, lots of Eurasian Tree Sparrows, an Asian Koel and some Scaly-breasted Munias feeding on roadside weed seeds.

The fields around this area were very lively with birds in the early morning with Green Bee-eaters and Blue-tailed Bee-eaters very evident. As I was admiring these colourful birds I also came across a single Blue-throated Bee-eater which got chased away by an Ashy Woodswallow.

Blue-tailed Bee-eater

Green Bee-eater

Species such as Greater Painted Snipe, Black Bittern, Cotton Pygmy Goose and oriental Skylark were all nice to see but there was no opprtunity to photograph them. A few hours of birding in the morning and about an hour in the late afternoon was a nice way to frame a day hanging around on the beach and eating local food and proved how many species birders can see even when on a non-birding trip to Thailand.

The complete list of birds I saw is here.

1. Lesser Whistling Duck
2. Cotton Pygmy Goose
3. Little Grebe
4. Feral Pigeon
5. Red Collared Dove
6. (Eastern) Spotted Dove
7. Zebra Dove
8. Germain’s Swiftlet
9. Asian Palm Swift
10. House Swift
11. Greater Coucal
12. Lesser Coucal
13. Asian Koel
14. Ruddy-breasted Crake
15. White-breasted Waterhen
16. Grey-headed Swamphen
17. Common Moorhen
18. Asian Openbill
19. Yellow Bittern
20. Javan Pond Heron
21. Eastern Cattle Egret
22. Purple Heron
23. (Eastern) Great Egret
24. Intermediate Egret
25. Little Egret
26. Pacific Reef Egret
27. Indian Cormorant
28. Little Cormorant
29. Black-winged Stilt
30. Lesser Sand Plover
31. Greater Sand Plover
32. Malaysian Plover
33. Red-wattled Lapwing
34. Greater Painted Snipe
35. Bronze-winged Jacana
36. Oriental Pratincole
37. Little Tern
38. Shikra
39. White-bellied Sea Eagle
40. Oriental Pied Hornbill
41. Eurasian Hoopoe
42. Green Bee-eater
43. Blue-throated Bee-eater
44. Blue-tailed Bee-eater
45. Indochinese Roller
46. Pied Kingfisher
47. White-throated Kingfisher
48. Coppersmith Barbet
49. Lineated Barbet
50. Common Flameback
51. (Sunda) Black-naped Oriole
52. Ashy Woodswallow
53. Common Iora
54. (Sunda) Pied Fantail
55. Black Drongo
56. Greater Racket-tailed Drongo
57. Eastern Jungle Crow
58. Indochinese Bushlark
59. Oriental Skylark
60. Zitting Cisticola
61. Yellow-bellied Prinia
62. Plain Prinia
63. Common Tailorbird
64. Dark-necked Tailorbird
65. Pacific Swallow
66. Sooty-headed Bulbul
67. (Sunda) Yellow-vented Bulbul
68. Streak-eared Bulbul
69. Puff-throated Babbler
70. White-crested Laughingthrush
71. Great (White-vented) Myna
72. Common Myna
73. Asian Pied Starling
74. Black-collared Starling
75. Oriental Magpie Robin
76. White-rumped Shama
77. Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker
78. Brown-throated Sunbird
79. Olive-backed Sunbird
80. Streaked Weaver
81. Baya Weaver
82. Scaly-breasted Munia
83. Chestnut Munia
84. Plain-backed Sparrow
85. Eurasian Tree Sparrow
86. Paddyfield Pipit